Observation review: Old science fiction meets New Weird in this 2001: A Space Odyssey homage

The digital camera whirs into focus. Distorts. Whirs into focus once more. Scanlines and static make the scene onerous to course of at first, however they slowly fade. There’s an astronaut right here—Emma Fisher, one among your crew. She sounds fearful. “That wasn’t good. SAM, run your self diagnostic procedure. What errors are you showing?”

You examine, one reminiscence module at a time. The first one, principally pink, shows 95% degradation. The second, 93%. The remaining two, related. “The main memory core has been corrupted,” you say. “I have lost significant station data.” Your voice is calm. The implications will not be. There’s been some form of accident onboard the Low Orbit Space Station, possibly an explosion, and no one is aware of why. Not even you, the ship’s synthetic intelligence.

There’s even an opportunity it was your fault.

HAL 9001

Stories Untold was one of my favorite games of 2017, a love-letter to analog expertise that managed to wring horror from the mundane—twiddling with the knobs on hospital gear to research some otherworldly experiment, or panning by means of microfiche whereas one-by-one neighboring radio towers went silent. It was messy and it was bizarre and most of all distinctive, in an business the place that appears all-too-rare. The ending was a letdown, nevertheless it stays a private favourite of mine and I’ve been eagerly awaiting No Code’s subsequent challenge.

IDG / Hayden Dingman

That subsequent challenge is Observation, a sci-fi thriller that builds off the concepts in Stories Untold. I believe No Code’s co-founder and lead author Jon McKellan summed it up greatest throughout final yr’s unveiling: “Observation is sort of 2001: A Space Odyssey—however you’re HAL.”

You play as SAM, quick for Systems Administration & Maintenance. In different phrases, you’re a synthetic intelligence, the pc presiding over the Low Orbit Space Station (LOSS) and its crew, orbiting 410 kilometers above the Earth. You have a hand in almost each mechanical perform—opening and shutting doorways, monitoring life help methods, preserving the station in orbit.

Something’s gone mistaken although. Observation opens with darkness, with static, after which with panic. “We’ve had some sort of accident,” says a voice you’ll quickly study belongs to aforementioned crew member Emma Fisher. “A collision or something maybe, I don’t know.”

IDG / Hayden Dingman

Much of Observation is spent unraveling this central thriller: What occurred, and why, and who (or what) triggered it?

But very like its predecessor—and 2001 as effectively—Observation is nice at wringing rigidity from the mundane. SAM’s features are restricted. He’s a voyeur, fairly actually the ghost within the machine. Picture HAL 9000’s glowing pink eye, the digital camera by means of which he peered into Discovery One. That’s SAM.

Or reasonably, that’s you. The house station is cobbled collectively from just a few dozen capsules, every of which has two or three cameras for SAM to take over. You “traverse” the station this manner, popping into RU-4 to examine on communications by means of the closest digital camera lens, or into EAS-11 to function the airlock. Occasionally you’ll inhabit somewhat floating robotic, although there your slim subject of view is hindrance sufficient that the elevated mobility is barely price it.

IDG / Hayden Dingman

The tech fetishism of Stories Untold is in all places right here, an ode to the retrofuturist science fiction of 2001 in addition to later movies like Alien and Terminator. Whenever SAM enters a brand new digital camera it pops and distorts like a worn VHS tape earlier than slowly clearing, the grain giving option to a pristine picture. Look rigorously and you may see the opposite digital camera hardpoints in every capsule as effectively, a unbelievable little element.

Panning round additionally reveals different methods SAM can combine with—normally doorways, however sometimes extra subtle instruments just like the coolant system or numerous sensors. Each of those subsystems has its personal pretend interface to decipher, dials to regulate or buttons to press or technical schematics to parse.

These are the first “puzzles” in Observation, although like Stories Untold there’s nothing too troublesome right here. Rather, it’s an train in worldbuilding. Where Stories Untold slavishly recreated analog hardware, Observation does the identical for early digital, simulating the rudimentary software program of the ‘80s and ‘90s. One of my favorites is the Sensor Calibration Tool, and it has nothing to do with the puzzle itself. Rather, in the top-left you’ll spot the torn web page icon that when indicated a damaged picture in Netscape circa 1994. Delightful.

IDG / Hayden Dingman

Inhabiting SAM is gradual and deliberate, typically frustratingly so. Even in the direction of the top of the sport, six or so hours in, you continue to must hyperlink SAM to each new system you come throughout—a course of that requires zooming a digital camera in shut sufficient, then holding down the fitting mouse button to start out the hyperlink, then typing in a collection of three random numbers. Then, if it’s a door, you usually must seek the advice of a schematic to determine the sample to unlock it, then plug that in, then open it.

None of those steps are onerous, nor very satisfying on their very own. Together they lend Observation weight although. You change into intimately aware of the house station, and with SAM’s capabilities. It forces you to change into SAM, even to assume like SAM to an extent.

It additionally acts as counterbalance to Observation’s disconcerting story. 2001’s Monolith is an apparent touchstone due to the HAL comparisons, however actually Observation feels extra harking back to Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation and different current “New Weird” works, the on a regular basis contrasted with the extraordinary. Everything you do as SAM is so relentlessly regular. Everything that occurs round SAM shouldn’t be.

IDG / Hayden Dingman

It’s an unbelievable journey, one which comes into barely clearer focus for those who take the time to scan the station for collectibles within the type of audio logs and supplemental paperwork—although admittedly this course of is usually at odds with the story’s pacing.

Even for those who do take these detours, there aren’t any tidy solutions ready. Observation begins in media res and ends on one thing of a cliffhanger. “Always leave them wanting more,” proper?

Bottom line

And I do. No Code’s two for 2, and has quick change into one among my favourite builders. I’m uncertain the identical concepts can help a 3rd recreation—Stories Untold was a profitable experiment, Observation proves it out—however that’s a query for the long run.

Observation is grander than Stories Untold, extra formidable by half, however equally fascinating and ingenious. It’s a pastiche of science fiction new and outdated however is aware of when to lean into expectations and when to subvert them, and its method to mechanical realism is so uncompromising it turns into a creative assertion as a substitute of mere mimicry. I’m already curious what’s subsequent.

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